New robots, new capabilities. Tracking what's coming for the workforce.
Robotics Tesla's robotics team landed in Ningbo on September 16 and opened a new production audit the next day, aimed at moving Optimus manufacturing capability from Tesla's U.S. plants to Chinese suppliers. Orders are already placed against a 50,000-unit target for 2026.
Robotics Agility Robotics unveiled Digit 5 on September 15. The new legs lift 50 lb repeatedly, a band Jonathan Hurst says covers single-person lift tasks in OSHA-regulated facilities, and the robot no longer needs a physical barrier to work near people.
Robotics UBTech said on September 13 that its Liuzhou super smart factory has started production, designed for annual capacity above 10,000 industrial humanoids, with one unit rolling off every 10 minutes. The 14,000-square-meter plant was built jointly with Siemens Digital Industries Software.
Robotics Reports on September 9 say the CSRC has informally raised the bar for humanoid IPOs. The number disclosed the same day matters more: under 10% of Unitree's 2025 revenue came from industrial applications.
Robotics XPeng started its humanoid robot line on September 8, with IRON walking off it after assembly. The load-bearing number is 80: the share of core processes on that line that run without a person.
Robotics Agility Robotics filed its S-4 on September 7, disclosing $1.8M in 2025 net sales and a $140M operating loss. The same document lists Digit v5 at about $8,500 a month.
Robotics Figure has raised a little under $2B in equity across its history. On September 3 it signed a compute deal worth $3.5B, expandable past $6B, from a cloud provider that is also becoming its shareholder. The bill for training a robot now exceeds the bill for building the company.
Robotics Lumos Robotics launched the MOS 2 on September 1. The load-bearing number is not the payload. It is the 1,000 failure-free hours the previous model logged on a live PLC line at Mitsubishi Electric's Changshu plant, after which Mitsubishi led the funding round.
Robotics A Reuters investigation published August 31 puts Chinese government purchases of humanoids and related gear at $230M in the first half, against $62M a year earlier and $6M in 2024. In the training center those purchases funded, an experienced operator produces one usable movement per 50 attempts, and the robots work at roughly 20% of human speed.
Robotics The number worth reading in the August 27 report is not $6B. It is where SoftBank's robot money has moved in eight weeks: out of the most famous robot company on earth, into driverless excavators, and now into a house robot whose chores are staffed.
Robotics Figure moved the training-data step off the payroll and onto a bounty sheet. Index took four months to collect 16 million uploads from 44,000 weekly contributors, has paid out $15M, and has $1B committed for the next 12 months.
Robotics XPeng named a valuation for its humanoid business on August 24, alongside Q2 earnings. The number to read isn't $6.3B. It's where the money sends IRON to work: the showroom floor, not the plant floor.